Review of Atomic Pico Bluetooth Dongle

Just before Christmas I purchased a new laptop to replace my previous the old one, which was show signs of its five year-long service. The new laptop, an Acer TimelineX, was ideal for me; apart from the fact that it lacked an internal Bluetooth radio. Quite a disappointment, but not to be set back, I asked the kind folks at MobileFun.co.uk if I could review one of their tiny Bluetooth dongles. Many thanks to Natalie who sent along the Atomic Pico Bluetooth Dongle for me to review and use.

There isn’t actually all that much to say about this gadget, it works exactly as expected. I’ve tested it with Windows7 and Ubuntu 10.04. In both cases, it was instantly recognised and just worked. Being Bluetooth 2.0, it transfers files quickly. It was just as well that the dongle worked with the built-in operating system drivers, because the dongle was supplied with a small driver CD which was unreadable in my laptop.

The thing to emphasise about this dongle is its Lilliputian size. The size has been cut down so much, even the USB plug is smaller than a normal plug would be, as shown below. What I mean by this is that there is just the wafer with the four contacts, but there is no metal jacket present to protect it.

There are other similarly sized USB devices, for example there is the EagleTec Flash drives, and Logitech’s VX Revolution Nano USB dongle. The idea with these drives is be able to leave them plugged in all the time. The Atomic Pico Bluetooth dongle is certainly no different. Its svelte dimensions mean that it is hardly noticeable when plugged into the side of a laptop, as shown in the photo. However, if you don’t intend to always have the dongle attached to your computer, you need to store it carefully. Unfortunately, as shown in the packing photo, there’s no slot-on casing for the dongle. As you can see in the photo I took for scale, I’ve been keeping mine in a memory card case.

The adapter is available from MobileFun for £9.14 which isn’t a bad price. It’s certainly he smallest Bluetooth dongle I’ve seen, and at less than a tenner, gets my vote!